Our take

The tragic case of Kate Steinle: On Thursday evening, a San Francisco jury acquitted Jose Ines Garcia Zaratea of murder and manslaughter charges in the shooting of Kate Steinle, as she strolled along Pier 14 in San Francisco in 2015. We wrote about the case in October, urging the jury not to follow Donald Trump’s lead and blame the horrific sequence of events on sanctuary cities.

Never miss a local story.

Sign up today for a free 30 day free trial of unlimited digital access.

Will bad actors have a ‘monopoly’ on Sacramento’s legal weed industry? Even with a history of code violations, the city’s medical marijuana dispensaries have first dibs on a limited number of retail licenses. Now isn’t the time to go easy on rule-breakers.

Their take

John Diaz: As they awaited the verdict in the trial of Kate Steinle’s accused killer, her parents and brother had one overriding wish. It had nothing to do with the severity of the defendant’s conviction. Above all, they wanted it to mark the end of a public profile they neither sought nor enjoyed.

San Francisco Chronicle: The apparent momentum for a tax cut in the Senate promises to benefit the wealthy and corporations at the expense of lower-income taxpayers and the government’s bottom line. That’s more than enough reason to justify the public’s low opinion of the effort, but the narrow Republican majority’s rush to pass it could also open a Pandora’s box of other bad ideas.

Syndicates’ take

Madeleine K. Albright: America’s diplomatic professionals have issued a dire warning about the crisis facing the State Department: Scores of top diplomats, including some of our highest-ranked career Foreign Service officers, have left the agency at “a dizzying speed” over the past 10 months.

Mailbag

“Make no mistake about it, marijuana is a dangerous drug. Use of marijuana is a serious problem. With the loosening of laws on its distribution, it will only get worse. Liberal politicians don’t care about that. In this instance, they are selling our state’s soul for revenue.” – Michael J. Lamb, Sacramento

Tweet of the day

“Jury convinced that illegal alien killed Kate Steinle accidentally. She would still be alive if we had a wall” – Ann Coulter‏, @AnnCoulter